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Rh it followed the edition of 1473, with all its errors and inaccuracies.

Mr. E. C. Thomas' Text.— The first true text of the Philobiblon, the result of a careful examination of twenty-eight MSS., and of the various printed editions, appeared in the year 1888:—

"The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, Treasurer and Chancellor of Edward III, edited and translated by Ernest C. Thomas, Barrister-at-law, late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, and Librarian of the Oxford Union. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co."

For fifteen years the enthusiastic editor—an ideal Bibliophile—had toiled at his labour of love, and his work was on all sides received with the recognition due to his monumental achievement. To the great loss of English learning, he did not long survive the conclusion of his labours. The very limited edition of the work was soon exhausted, and it is by the most generous permission of his father, Mr. John Thomas, of Lower Broughton, Manchester, that the translation—the only trustworthy rendering of Richard de Bury's precious treatise—is now, for the first time, made accessible to the larger book-loving public, and fittingly inaugurates the present series of English